50 Fun Facts About Campbell's Soup Cans

Which artist painted the Campbell's Soup Cans series?

He was a successful commercial illustrator looking for a subject that would set him apart from Lichtenstein and Rosenquist.

How many canvases make up the original Campbell's Soup Cans series?

Each shows a different variety of Campbell's soup on the same 20-by-16-inch canvas.

In which city were the Campbell's Soup Cans first exhibited, in July 1962?

Warhol did not attend, there was no formal opening, and the show coincided with La Cienega Boulevard's Monday Art Walk.

What was the name of the West Coast space that gave the soup cans their first show?

Its owner had visited Warhol's studio in May 1962, when he was working on his sixteenth soup can, and was amazed he had no dealer.

Which art dealer kept the original 32 canvases together as a set and eventually helped MoMA acquire them?

He put them on permanent loan to the National Gallery of Art in 1987, two days before Warhol died, and MoMA bought them in 1996.

How were the paintings displayed at their 1962 debut?

MoMA repeated the shelf-like presentation in 2015, only the fourth time the series had ever been shown in a single line.

How much did Warhol charge the dealer for the complete set of 32 paintings in 1962?

The dealer paid in ten monthly instalments of $100 after persuading the handful of buyers to give up their purchases.

Which actor reserved Campbell's Soup Can (Tomato) before the 1962 show opened, then was talked into giving it back?

He and his wife Brooke Hayward later threw a party to introduce Warhol to Hollywood at his second show there in 1963.

Roughly how many of the 32 paintings sold during the 1962 show before Blum reassembled the set?

They were reportedly offered at $200 and went for about $100 apiece; collector Don Factor 'never forgave' Blum for taking his Tomato back.

How did the nearby Primus Stuart Gallery mock the soup can show?

The sign offered the real thing at 'Our Low Price 2 for 33 Cents'; the city's main newspaper ran a cartoon ridiculing the paintings too.

What happened on 4 August 1962, the day the soup can exhibition closed?

Warhol began his silkscreen portraits of Monroe shortly afterwards, moving from supermarket shelves to celebrity.

Contrary to popular belief, how were the original 32 canvases made?

They were among the last works Warhol painted largely by hand; he only mastered silkscreen later, learning from Floriano Vecchi of Tiber Press.

What detail on each can did Warhol apply with a rubber stamp?

He also used commercial-grade acrylic rather than the oil paint usual for fine art.

Where did Warhol paint the series in late 1961 and 1962?

The building was photographed in 2007 as the birthplace of the series; the Factory came later.

Whose photographs of soup cans did Warhol trace to make the original 32 paintings?

Warhol had already used Wallowitch's photographs as source material for his self-published A Gold Book in 1957.

Who reputedly advised Warhol, for a $50 fee, to paint 'something you see every day', like a soup can?

Other stories credit grocery shopping, his love of soup and Coke, or his mother's habit of making flowers out of tin cans; Robert Indiana said simply that he liked soup.

How long did Warhol claim he ate the same Campbell's soup lunch every day?

He said his mother opened a can for him 'because that's all we could afford', though biographers doubt the family ate it often, since it was marketed as upscale.

How did the Campbell company first react to the 1962 exhibition?

By late 1962 it had changed tack and commissioned a tomato soup can painting as a gift for its retiring chairman.

What inspired the red-and-white Campbell's label of 1898 that Warhol later immortalised?

The chemist John T. Dorrance had just devised a way to condense soup; the tilted 'O' in Soup and the 1900 gold medal survive on today's label.

What year did Joseph A. Campbell and icebox maker Abraham Anderson found Campbell's?

Anderson's son Campbell Speelman stayed on as creative director and designed the original soup cans.

Which 1926 painting by Luigi Lucioni is thought to be the first depiction of a Campbell's soup can in high art?

It set the can and a telephone against homemade wine and an apple as symbols of industry versus tradition, decades before Warhol.

What object appears in the 1962 painting that was the first Warhol shown in a museum?

Big Campbell's Soup Can with Can Opener (Vegetable) is the only work in the series to show one; it sold for $27.5 million in 2017.

How is Warhol's largest single soup can canvas, from 1962, arranged?

The 72-by-100-inch canvas was shown in the 1963 exhibition Six Painters and the Object in Minneapolis.

What did Warhol change for his set of twenty large soup can canvases in 1965?

Nineteen of the twenty survive; twelve were reunited at L&M Arts in New York in 2011.

How many screen prints are in each of the Campbell's Soup I (1968) and Campbell's Soup II (1969) portfolios?

Each portfolio was issued in an edition of 250; the 1969 set shows the updated, more elaborate labels.

What disclaimer appeared on some unauthorised Brussels reprints of the screen prints?

The knock-offs, stamped 'Sunday B Morning', came out of a falling-out between Warhol and studio employees who took his screens and colour codes to Belgium.

Which flavour was on the torn-label can painting that set a $60,000 record for a living American artist in 1970?

Roy Lichtenstein beat the record within months when Big Painting No. 6 fetched $75,000.

Which collector paid $11,776,000 for Small Torn Campbell Soup Can (Pepper Pot) in 2006?

The painting now hangs in his own museum, The Broad.

Approximately how much did MoMA pay for the original 32 canvases in 1996?

The purchase drew on a long list of funds and bequests plus a partial gift from the dealer who had bought them for a pittance in 1962.

How does MoMA normally arrange the 32 canvases on its wall?

At the National Gallery of Art they had hung in a four-row, eight-column grid in alphabetical order.

What did the promotional 'Souper Dress' of 1967 cost customers?

It entered the Metropolitan Museum's costume collection in 1995, a year before MoMA bought the paintings.

In 2012 Campbell's sold Warhol-inspired tomato soup cans through which US retailer?

About 1.2 million cans went for 75 cents each; the same year Vans and Supreme put the labels on shoes and clothing.

In which animated sitcom does Warhol throw soup cans at the main character in a 1999 episode?

The episode is 'Mom and Pop Art'; a soup can painting had already appeared in a gallery in 1991's 'Brush with Greatness'.

Which pair of graffiti artists spray-painted a New York subway train with soup cans in homage to Warhol in 1979?

A music critic the previous year had argued Warhol's shock tactics had spilled over into rock as well.

What did Warhol jokingly call the autographed real soup cans he showed at the 1964 American Supermarket show?

Fans regularly asked him to sign supermarket cans and he usually obliged.

Which flavour did Artforum critic Henry T. Hopkins name as his personal favourite among the 32 canvases?

He read the show as both a negative point about standardisation and 'a nostalgic call for a return to nature'.

What did Time magazine call Warhol and the artists treating banal everyday objects as high art in May 1962?

Warhol told the magazine: 'I just paint things I always thought were beautiful, things you use every day and never think about.'

Which Bennington student's satirical 1962 essay on the soup cans did Warhol reproduce as an exhibition announcement?

Her professor Lawrence Alloway forwarded it, and excerpts ran in Art Journal in 1963.

How many prints from a Campbell's Soup I portfolio were stolen from the Springfield Art Museum in 2016?

The FBI offered a $25,000 reward and the museum eventually received a $750,000 insurance payout.

Which US Supreme Court justice called Warhol's soup cans 'an easy case' for fair use in a 2023 opinion?

Campbell's never sued; Justice Breyer had also cited an artistic painting of an advertising logo as potential fair use in Google v. Oracle.

Why did Warhol give his brother Paul a single soup can painting on a 20-by-15-inch canvas in 1961?

The family auctioned it at Christie's in 2002, and it is often seen as a precursor to the famous series.

Which technique, developed at Carnegie Tech, gave Warhol's early illustration its irregular lines?

He traced images and blotted the wet ink; his first published drawing appeared in Glamour in 1949.

Which climate protest hit a Campbell's Soup I set at the National Gallery of Australia in November 2022?

The Art Gallery of Ontario's set, bought in 2017, was the first in a Canadian public collection.

Which Hartford museum gave a Warhol soup can its first museum showing, in an August 1962 group show?

Two months later 200 Soup Cans appeared in Sidney Janis Gallery's landmark New Realists exhibition alongside Lichtenstein and Oldenburg.

Which New York dealer cancelled a planned December 1962 Warhol show, citing 'very bad repercussions'?

Her gallery still took paintings on consignment, and her assistant John Weber sold ten of them.

Which artist's identical blue monochromes has critic Blake Gopnik linked to Warhol's repeated cans?

Klein had invited Warhol to his 1962 wedding, and Warhol cited Klein's 1957 Milan presentation as an influence.

Which Frank Stella series, keyed to a paint maker's colour range, has been suggested as an inspiration for the cans?

Warhol bought six miniature paintings from the series in May 1961, months before he began the soup cans.

How much did Big Campbell's Soup Can With Can Opener (Vegetable) fetch at Christie's in May 2017?

A year earlier a Large Campbell's Soup Can had disappointed at $7.4 million in a softer market.

How old was Matthew Balestrieri when he won Campbell's 1994 'Art of Soup' contest with an Ancient Egypt design?

The contest drew over 10,000 entries and was judged by a panel that included Warhol's brother Paul Warhola.

Which appropriation artist, who saw the 1962 Ferus show, debuted there in 1965 with reinterpretations of the cans?

Louise Lawler later appropriated the series too, in Soup (2022) from her Distorted for the Times series.